International audience Rhazes (9th cent.), and Leonhart Fuchs (16th cent.) were good readers of the Greek physicians (Hippocrates, Galen, Dioscorides etc.). Fuchs, well known for his criticism of the Arabic medicine and his promotion of the Greek one, is actually a meticulous reader of Avicenna, Rhazes, as well as his own contemporary physicians. Both Rhazes and Fuchs put forward their concern about medicine dealing with everyday patients, in everyday life, in order to cure as many people as possible and to issue instructions as detailed and precise as possible intended for their fellow physicians, as well as for “paramedics” (druggists or surgeons). Our key aim is to study the extent to which those readings of the Greek physicians gave birth to innovative medicine, through respectful or polemic use of the past, and careful examination of changes due to chronological, social or environmental factors. The case studies we propose to examine are pertaining to: terminology, including the paradox of discussing terms without knowing their original version (neither Rhazes reads Greek, nor Fuchs Arabic); materia medica as a foundation for pharmacology; observations and treatments of various categories of fevers, regarded either as autonomous diseases or as symptoms; physiology and anatomy; methods of healing and results; teaching medicine, i.e. transmission of personal experience and attitude towards the ancient “medical authorities”, academic transmission of a bookish knowledge with or without practical concern.